"The spirit of Yule created us four thousand years ago."

"That sounds weirdly plausible given the rest of tonight. Where did the spirit of Yule come from? Is there a corresponding spirit for the other solstice or just the one? Should I stop asking you a million questions and let you get back to doing whatever you were doing?"

"I'm Santa's personal assistant, it's my job to educate the new Santa. The current legendary figures are the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, Death, leprechauns, the Bogeyman, Jack Frost, Mother Nature, Father Time, Krampus, and Jack O'Lantern. I don't know where holiday spirits come from, they just sort of happen."

"Woah that's a lot of things. I guess the only real numbers are zero one and lots, but that's still. And all of them are hiding from humans? And Death is a person?" 

What if someone gets Death to fall off the Green Building, what then? Or, coming at it from the other end, does that mean that if Aubrey de Grey invents immortality a guy with a scythe will come after him? This definitely has massive implications and he can't at all tell whether they're good or bad.

"Most of them don't really do much that adults would notice. The Bogeyman isn't trying to hide from anyone, it's just that not a lot of parents believe their children that the children are being menaced by a being with claws and fangs and talons."

"That and Death both sound extremely concerning, but presumably the situation there is at least stable and I should figure out Christmas stuff first. Shall we go to the North Pole and see what's happening or are there more things you want to explain first?"

"I'm mostly here to answer any questions you have!"

"How does the whole delivering presents on Christmas actually work? You mentioned reindeer, I'm imagining some sort of time shenanigans? What are the limits on how many presents we can do?" He might get to hand out presents to thousands or millions of people and if he can solve the inevitable logistical mess that sounds really fun.

"We stop time until all the presents are delivered."

"That's really cool. I guess it might get boring after a few thousand, but I wouldn't hold anything up by taking breaks--or if any elves think that sounds fun we could do shifts, unless I'm the only one who can pilot the sleigh or something.

We are gonna bring so much joy to so many children."

"We are!!!!"

"How do we find out who wants what, once we've gone public we can set up a web form or something but I'm thinking maybe the best way to go public is just by going all out this next Christmas and then making an announcement, unless you have a better idea, so do we have some minimal-spying way to get present requests already working?"

"We get the kids' letters, but obviously that won't help if they don't write to Santa at all..."

"That's really cool, that you get the letters. So my first thought is to use the spy cameras, but instead of having a person looking at them just transcribe all the audio and then search it for anything that looks like a request for an object, but I'm not actually a good enough programmer to do that last step optimally and I may or may not be able to get that good in time to make all the stuff before Christmas. And of course next year more kids will know we exist and send us mail. The really important thing to get right is kids in developing countries, maybe I can find research on what parents tend to spend their money on and make a model of what's most useful . . . if I had known this was going to happen I would have picked a different major, CS or Econ or something."

"...I don't know why you're assuming we don't have programmers."

"I'm sorry, of course you have programmers. I'm trying not to assume any given programmer is going to be interested in implementing a thing I thought up in thirty seconds, but maybe I should just be assuming someone is going to be excited about any given Christmas-related project. 

I'm actually really curious about elves in general. Your biology, your culture, what your government is like, what your economy is like, if you have your own language I'd like to learn it, that sort of thing. If it's not rude to ask."

"Uh, we're not immortal but our life expectancy is about five hundred years. Most of us look like human children-- I'm actually half-human, that's why I look so old. We care a lot about Christmas? Santa is in charge of all the elves but usually we handle most of the implementation details ourselves. We have an economy to allocate scarce goods but I think we're really different from humans because what every elf wants most is to spread the Christmas spirit and make human children happy. We usually speak the current Santa's language, but we can speak all human languages."

"Ooh, omniglossia and a five-hundred-year lifespan, nice. And all having common goals sounds really good too. Also at some point I'd like to look at a list of all the previous Santa's policies and what the general elven public opinion on them is, if such a thing is kicking around." Just because running his mouth irresponsibly is how he got this job doesn't mean he should go changing things that consensus holds to have worked for years. Especially not if all the elves have opinions as sensible as Lev's.

"...Previous Santa kind of has a lot of policies. Like, do you want to see the policies on the education of elf children, or the kind of food offered in Cocoa Cottage, or whether we offer better presents to rich kids or poor kids--"

Bruce runs his hand through his hair; now his hair has moon dust on it. "That sounds kind of exhausting just thinking about it. Is there some reason elf parents and teachers and children don't make education policy and whoever does the cooking at Cocoa Cottage doesn't decide the menu?" There's a reason Bruce has never so much as run for student council rep, and that reason is: aaaaa. "Who gets what presents at least sounds vaguely in my wheelhouse. I'd like to shoot for giving everyone the most useful present we can, but if that's not possible we should definitely spend most of our resources on the poorest kids."

"Well, I mean, most of the time elves set policies about things because Santa doesn't care, but in principle you could set policies about whatever you want. --Oh, we're going to have to reorient everything."

"I'd really rather not set policies about things that don't affect me, I'm making an exception for the presents thing because I think it's really important. I don't know quite what you mean by reorient everything, but sorry for all the extra work."

"Right now we give better presents to rich children."

"I guess you'd have to, if you were keeping it secret--how did you keep it secret, anyway? I guess most of the time every relative would assume someone else bought the thing, and if they compared notes they'd conclude whoever bought it forgot."

"Mind control. The parents believe they bought it."